


I Have Always Wanted To Have A Neighbor Just Like You

by IncurableNecromantic



Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Other, but like, he's already a total monster, he's the Beast, in anyone else this would be a Transformation Into A Total Monster scene, maybe this just helps him realize that he's got no business in this part of the world at all, pretty gory stuff herein, so I don't even know, you've all been entirely too cheerful lately
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-11
Updated: 2015-08-11
Packaged: 2018-04-14 02:23:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4546557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IncurableNecromantic/pseuds/IncurableNecromantic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some gestures of affection are harder to understand than others.</p><p>Some, we never understand at all.</p><p>_____</p><p>
  <i>Check out the sequel: <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/6442390/chapters/14746426">Rebuilding</a> by miraeyeteeth</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Have Always Wanted To Have A Neighbor Just Like You

"Lord of Joy."  

Enoch looked up from his perambulation with a broad grin.  "Lord of the Wastes!  What a happy surprise."

"Is there any such thing as an unhappy surprise, for you?" the Beast of Eternal Darkness asked.  He stood three trees deep in his Wood, peering out at Enoch with his strange, glowing eyes.  

"Not so far as I've experienced, but I suppose it's theoretically possible."  Enoch waved a few tendril in a slow, beckoning curl.  "Won't you come join me in a stroll?"

The Beast advanced, gracefully crossing the border of their lands.  

"I don't think I've seen you since your antlers grew back," Enoch observed.  "They're very handsome."

"Are they?" the Beast asked.  His voice took on a definite drawl and Enoch grinned to himself.  "Thank you.  I'm pleased to hear you find them so."

"I certainly do."

"Your cat-flesh is looking well, actually," the Beast said.  "The coat looks healthy."

"Does it?  I didn't know you were in the habit of peeping on me while I worked," Enoch replied.

The Beast tensed and fell silent.  Enoch nudged him with a slow undulation of his whole body.

"You're kind to say something," Enoch said.  "I take pride in that skin and I like to pamper it."

"Do you," the Beast murmured.

Enoch waited to hear if there was more.  There wasn't, for the moment, and they walked slowly along the perimeter of Pottsfield before the Beast pled other business and disappeared once more into the dark.  

That was very pleasing indeed, Enoch thought.  It had only been a few moons since they'd been reunited.

He wouldn't count a chicken before it died, but it was hard not to hope.  Maybe that's what kept the Beast coming back, actually.

He should see what he could do to enhance it.

***

First to appear was the little mound of dead birds.

It sat at the Northern edge of Pottsfield, just on the border between the town and the Woods. The mound was only piled about a foot high, but it was still a foot’s worth of dead birds, which was considerably more dead birds than anyone was generally in the habit of seeing all at once. There were all kinds of dead birds stacked on the mound, crows and jays and sparrows and finches, and each one’s neck had been very precisely snapped.

Enoch had no idea where they’d come from, but he carefully took them away before they could bother anyone. He dumped them in a ditch and drew a little dried grass over them, and that was that.

The second apparition was the massive fish. Parson Bleak found that one, and it served to startle him rather badly. Enoch was sent for and he approached the scene with just a little wariness, much more concerned with putting his townsfolk at ease than he was anything else.

The fish was as long as a man, its great bulbous eyes staring blindly at the sky as flies and bugs began to pick at it. It did not reek as horribly as it might’ve, which Enoch interpreted as meaning that it was a fresh kill. Gouges and scrapes on the body and the sparse trail of flattened grass and the few silvery scales scattered in the trees told how it had been dragged from its pond. Whoever had left it had ripped open its belly before they abandoned it, and its cold, slick guts made for a smorgasbord for ants.

“What do you think it means, Enoch?” old Mr. Hapsborough asked, putting his horn to the side of his head to hear better.

“I couldn’t say,” Enoch admitted, careful to enunciate.

“Is it some kind of message? A sign?” Mrs. Green murmured.

“Perhaps it is. I couldn’t imagine what the message would be, however,” Enoch said, reaching out and running a ribbon across the ground beyond the carcass. He brushed his tendril here and there across the earth, but there was no hint of the fish’s origin. Strange.

“Could be a raptor,” Mr. Aspen said. “They’ve been known to pick such things up and drop them from the sky, to kill them.”

The assembled Pottsfielders considered that for a moment, before coming to the inevitable conclusion: that any bird sufficiently huge to do this to a man-sized fish must also be very capable of snatching up a full-grown person. Enoch sighed to himself.

Mr. Aspen was a scholar but Enoch sometimes wondered if he missed out on practicalities.

“I’m sure it wasn’t a raptor,” Enoch said soothingly. “The body would be severely damaged, if it had been dropped, and after all the cut on the belly is very clean. I’m sure we have nothing to worry about from the skies.”

Mr. Aspen polished his glasses, somewhat embarrassed. “Oh, of course, of course. Just a speculation.”

“Well,” Enoch said, “I think we can chalk this up to a strange afternoon’s gossip and let it be at that. We’ll just keep an extra eye out, shall we?”

This wasn’t perfectly satisfactory, of course, but there really wasn’t much else that anyone could do. Enoch himself dragged the fish away and tossed it in an unused cornfield to let it rot to compost in peace.

He was braced for another display.

He kept his mind on his borders for several nights, and when he sensed movement, he went out to intercept it.

Enoch passed through the corn fields of sleeping Pottsfield and began to track along the rim of his land, carefully filtering the caress of the night wind and the brushing of his own ribbons from his senses, alert for anything. By the far West edge, he paused.

"Good evening, Voice of the Night," he said, amused.

The Beast of Eternal Darkness shot upright from the low crouch he'd been curled in. He took a retreating step or two towards the Woods, cold white eyes complemented by the cold white light that peeped briefly through his long fur cape.

"...Harvest King."

"What a treat, to run into you! I hadn't expected the pleasure of your company but I'm absolutely delighted. What brings you into this part of the world?"

"I am wandering," the Beast replied. "I...trust I am not intruding?"

"Oh, stop. Of course you aren't. As it happens, I'm wandering, too. Come and walk with me a little, won't you?"

The Beast stood still for a moment before dropping his gaze to the earth.

Enoch followed his gaze.

A small heap of trash sat before them.

Trash with little arms.

Enoch peered at it, discerning here and there a frozen limb, a hairless tail, an ominously-shaped bundle wrapped in ice-encrusted fur. It sprawled where it sat, hairy and matted, little clawed hands and feet sticking out, little snouts and wrinkled eyes squeezed shut.

"Is that--"

"I thought perhaps you could make--"

Enoch looked at the Beast. The Beast did not look at Enoch.

"--some use out of it," the Beast said, more quietly. "I happened upon it in the Woods. Near an old city. In a well. Can you?"

"It's a rat king," Enoch said. He only barely managed to turn it into a question by raising his pitch. It didn't quite work.

"I think that's what they're called," the Beast confirmed. "I don't really know."

"I...appreciate you thinking of me," Enoch said, and this was very true indeed, "but I'm not entirely sure what I would do with it."

The Beast's head tilted, making an eerie creaking noise as it went.

"It's a rat king," he said carefully, as if he wasn't sure that Enoch understood him.

"And a very handsome one," Enoch agreed. "Only I'm not sure it's in our best interests to have thirty rats--albeit tied together--running wild through the crops and grain silos."

"No, of course not," the Beast said. "I do know something about agriculture. Don't be absurd. It only makes sense to bring it back if you appreciate the sport of hunting. And even then, it won't give you a good chase."

"Hunting," Enoch echoed. "I'm sorry, Hope-Eater, you've completely lost me."

"It's to eat," the Beast said. "Isn't it obvious? It's a pile of rats."

"Eat?" Enoch asked, repulsed. "Even if I did eat--"

"You don't eat?" the Beast asked quietly.

"I wouldn't want to eat...such a thing. Not that I don't appreciate the offer," he added hastily.

"Then what did you do with the fish? The birds?"

"Was that you?" Enoch asked, bewildered. "I thought it might be, but I couldn't figure out why."

"I...what did you do with them?" the Beast hedged. He took another step back towards the Woods.

"I threw the fish in a field, for compost. And I just covered the birds in a ditch, I'm afraid."

"I see."

"Why did you leave them? It's not like you, to waste your kills."

"I...misunderstood. I thought...your forms are such that--"  The Beast took a few steps away from the rat king.  

"Hm?"

"I imagined that maybe you are closer to your skins than is the case."

Enoch leaned closer to his visitor. "Which means?"

The Beast bristled.

"I thought you partook more in the habits of the cat whose flesh you wear," he snapped.

Enoch grinned broadly. Birds and fish and mice! Of course!

"I only regret that I do not," Enoch crooned. "I'm touched! It's very thoughtful of you, Beast, to leave me a present or two."

"They aren't presents," the Beast said sharply. "It's just trash I find, cluttering up my Woods. If you can make some use of them, then it gets them out of my way. If you cannot, then I won't trouble you with any more of them."

"Oh, no, no no no," Enoch said. "No, I'm more than happy to make use of anything you'd care to give me. Do you have any idea what excellent fertilizer fish guts make?"

The Beast stared at him. "I do not."

"Amazing stuff. Fantastic. And of course we're landlocked, so I almost never get to have any of it. That section of field is going to come up beautifully, you just wait and see."

"...fertilizer."

"Yes."

The Beast considered that.

"Such trash is a treasure," Enoch said encouragingly. "I can't thank you enough."

"There is no need," the Beast said firmly. "It's just trash, Harvest King."

"No."

"It's nothing," the Beast insisted.

Enoch smiled to himself. "Well, I appreciate it nevertheless. Let me be silent on the subject, if that pleases you, and we can take a walk instead."

The Beast looked down at the rat king.

"I should find somewhere else for this," he said.

"Oh, it can wait, don't you think?" Enoch asked. A few ribbons slipped free of his trunk and draped themselves across the Beast's shoulders. "Why don't you just come along with me for a little walk, neighbor, and we can talk about one thing and another. It must be ages since the last time we saw each other."

The Beast took a slow step away from the rat king before glancing back.

"It's frozen, Hope-Eater," Enoch said. "It can't get away."

"Of course not," the Beast replied, turning forward again. "Nothing gets away."

Enoch grinned to himself.

***

By the time the wind wafted the smell to him, deep in the Woods, he knew he was too late.

His prey was mostly lost and despairing, but the faintest wisp of scent had him abandoning his meal and racing through the Woods like a deer in flight. He wove in and out of the tree trunks, but he knew it was taking too long. He clawed his way up and raced across the treetops, staring towards the Eastern horizon.

An orange glow lit up the sky, clouded with dark smoke. He was much, much too late.

He dropped out of the trees not far from the border, and hurriedly paced towards the town.

Pottsfield was engulfed in flames. Fire burned in every window, blackened facades staring like dead faces as the souls inside them met the inferno. Everything was as dry as a bone in Pottsfield, and they were landlocked, with no need for more water than what the rain provided for the fields.

If a cry had gone up about the fire, it was silenced now. He ran into the center of town, but the great barn was totally consumed.  Possibly it had been the first to go.

Horrible.  It was horrible, he knew, and he even felt it, a little, knowing that Enoch would be heartbroken by the state of his town.  Poor Enoch. It was better that he wasn't here to see this.

He wasn't, was he?

The Beast looked around, breathing in. Burning feathers and frying flesh, roasting vegetables and the subtle stink of burning bone. No burning sugar. No molasses at all.

Well, then. His path was clear. If Enoch was not here, he would reap. He would do all he could for this place.

The Beast reached beneath his fur cape and drew out his lantern. He undid the latch keeping the window closed and stuck his fingertips inside.

He hissed quietly and drew out his hand as soon as he could. He much preferred the pain of burning to the vague, pervasive discomfort of touching the flame itself.

His fingertips burned with a cold, white fire, and he stuck them into a burning section of a nearby building.

The healthy, earthly fire was immediately consumed by his own white flames, and he sucked in at the sudden jolt of energy that roared into him. White fire communicated throughout the town, burning through the orange flames and eating what they had begun to gnaw. He swallowed them whole, watching carefully as the smoke dissipated and the roar of inferno and crackle of beams and bursting wood ceased, leaving nothing but the Beast standing in cold-cracked silence as the town burned.

He stayed with it until the last fires guttered and died in the ruins of Pottsfield. The sky was coming on towards dawn, but he was in no hurry to go. It was going to be an overcast day, and no one would be coming by any time soon. He felt strong and full, not precisely satisfied but much better fed than he would've expected from a place with so little hope.

Interesting.

He turned to strike out into one of the farther fields and do what had to be done when he felt something coil around his ankle. He glanced down, intrigued, only to find himself flung through the air and whipped so hard onto the ashy earth that he bounced.

He grunted aloud, almost more shocked than hurt. Almost.

His arms had automatically made a protective cage for his lantern, and he squeezed it tighter as he picked up his head and tried to look around himself, hopelessly disoriented.

Another something wrapped around his ankle and hurled him through the air, this time beating him into the charred trunk of an old oak tree. He gasped in useless pain as he heard his own back crack sharply, louder to his senses than the sound of the tree breaking.

Yet another something grabbed his leg, and this time he managed to see what it was before it threw him again.

It was a white, withered root, protruding from the ground. He struggled through pain and confusion to watch the way it crumbled to pieces even as it seized him in a ferocious grip and winged him through the air, dropping him hard against the haggard earth.

He lay there, reeling in blind, idiot agony for a few seconds. He groped for the dagger he kept under his cloak.

“Enoch?” he wondered aloud.

He almost had his fingers around the handle of his knife when several of the withered roots caught him fast around the chest and neck.

“Enoch!” he snapped. If this had been anyone else--

A root wrapped around his right antler.

He was screaming aloud long before the root ripped his antler out of his head. It finally gave with a wet crack and a still-thinking, still-analytical part of him found that it was no longer so sure he’d been right in his estimation of his own bonelessness.

The roots around his neck squeezed and shook him.

YOU WATCHED, a titanic voice roared. YOU WATCHED THEM BURN.

The Beast squinted his right eye closed as black oil seeped out of the hole in his head.

IT WOULD HAVE BEEN ENOUGH IF YOU HAD ONLY WATCHED, the voice bellowed. BUT YOU ATE THEM WITH YOUR OWN FIRE. YOU ATE THEM. _YOU ATE THEM!_

The roots crumbled. More rose up to replace them, falling away as fast as they could grow. They twisted him and slammed him into the ground, again, and again, and again.

IT HAD BEEN BETTER IF I HAD LEFT YOU A SCREAMING THING IN THE DARK, the voice thundered. IF I HAD GIVEN YOUR LANTERN TO THE TAVERN FOR A CHAMBER POT!

Oh, the Beast realized, as he broke open on the hard earth. Oh. He’d misunderstood. He’d badly misunderstood.

MONSTER! ANIMAL!

Oh.

WORM IN THE DARKNESS! DISEASE ON THE LAND!

Yes.

WRETCH! HEARTLESS, FILTHY ABOMINATION!

He thought he was seeing more clearly now.

The white roots reached out and effortlessly pried away his lantern, holding it up and away from his clawing hands.

“No!” he managed, choking, gurgling, wheezing. “No!”

I WOULD BE WITHIN MY RIGHTS TO THROW IT IN A RIVER, the voice barked. I WOULD BE WITHIN MY RIGHTS TO SUFFOCATE IT SLOWLY AND LET YOU SUFFER. YOU OWED ME A DEBT! YOU OWED ME YOUR LIFE!

“I do,” he acknowledged. “Don’t--do not touch it.”

BEG ME.

He closed his eyes. “Please. Don’t blow it out. Please.”

The root went rigid and after a long moment simply dropped the lantern to the ground. He managed to get himself in a position to crawl towards it and almost had his fingers wrapped around the handle when a few roots spitefully wrapped around him and threw him again, giving him three more solid slams before unwinding from him and leaving him to pant and ache.

How horrible, he thought, it must be to be a god that loved. How horrific, the grief and rage of a loving thing.

How fortunate, that he would have no part in any of it. Not after today.

He dragged himself back towards his lantern, unable to be wary of the roots. They seemed done with him, for the moment at least, and allowed him to check his lantern and ensure that it was still lit.

It was. The oil reserve was only a little spilled. It would do.

He rolled his body, snapping his back into its rightful position and setting his limbs as they should be. He sat on the scorched earth of Pottsfield for a few minutes, looking around and waiting for the next cataclysm.

He wished he still misunderstood. That had been something better than this.

He slowly stood up, listening and sniffing the air. Nothing but charcoal. Nothing but death.

“Enoch?” he asked, flinching as soon as he said it. Maybe he’d always flinch, when he spoke that name.

LEAVE. NEVER RETURN. NEVER RETURN.

“Enoch--”

I WILL BLOW YOU TO SMOKE IF I EVER SEE A HAIR OF YOU. I NEVER WANT TO HEAR YOUR VOICE AGAIN.

The Beast stood still for a few seconds.

“May I cross your territory to go back into my own?” he asked quietly.

DO I SEEM LIKE I CARE ABOUT ANYTHING YOU DO, ANYMORE?

The Beast had to admit that he had a point.

He wanted to say goodbye, but he somehow felt that wouldn’t be well received.

He fumbled again for his dagger, crossing the fields towards his own Woods. He didn’t have to do this, he knew. He could just sit tight and hold onto what he’d taken, what he had been able to harvest. It wasn't as if him doing what he'd come here planning to do would change anything. En--the god of this place had made up its mind about him. Wouldn’t it be right and proper, to substantiate such excellent perspicacity?

Oh, but he was a spiteful abomination, wasn’t he? It wouldn’t twist the knife in anyone but himself, but he still loved to defy expectations.

He certainly hoped, at least, that the god of this place had never grieved for him in this same way. Happily, he had no suspicion that that had ever been the case.

The Beast found a nice spot towards the Eastern side. He knew a little about agriculture, yes, a very little, and despite the overcast nature of the day he tried to guess where the sun would be. Direct, but not too direct. Warm. Nourishing. Only a little ash had drifted here, just enough to fertilize and not to poison.

He got down on his knees and scratched a little trench in the dirt, a few inches deep. He straddled it, positioning himself carefully over the exposed earth.

By comparison, this wouldn’t hurt a bit.

He drew out his dagger and ripped long lines down his arms and along his neck. Oil trickled slowly out of the cuts, dropping onto the earth, but that was hardly enough.

He stuck the knife into his middle and ripped down, slicing through screams and moans to let the black oil pour out. He reached into the hole he’d made and pulled out little shriveled oily things, dragging out ropes of sticky suffering and slick sacks of sorrow until he had the undigested things in the palms of his slick hands.

He pressed them into the earth like bulbs, covering them over in the oil oozing from his body. He reached back in and up, wrapping around a hard, dense little knot and squeezing it in a steady rhythm, feeling the oil pulse out of his cuts in time with the squeezing.

It took a long time. Longer than the interview with the god of the land. This wouldn't clear his debt, but it was obvious now that nothing ever would. He'd just have to shoulder the burden as long as he walked the Woods. He'd never be given any other chances to pay it back.

At last, when all his squeezing only twisted the dry and sticky thing and no more oil dripped from him, he gave the little internal thing a swift tug and pulled it out of his body. He tossed it into the oily trench before laboriously getting to his feet.

He kicked a little dirt over the trench and looked up towards the Woods. He had a tree he’d tapped for sap around here somewhere. That would do.

He didn’t look back towards the charred ruins of the town. He didn’t look to see if the god of skins had found a new vessel to house him.

He would go and wrap himself up in ice, and this, too, would sink into the dark.

He walked into his Woods. They were as silent as the grave.

That was just fine. He didn’t think he would be singing for a long, long while.

***

Enoch felt the rain that broke over the ruins of his town and he counted it a good thing the Queen of the Clouds didn’t show her face, if she was up there. The rain was too little, too late, and in any event he was not fit for any kind of social discourse.

He raged and smoldered in the earth for a while. It was not a long time, in the scheme of things, but it felt long, with no mortals to break up his hours, no considerations of town matters to occupy his ancient mind.

A turkey had kicked over a lamp in a hay loft. That was all. That was all it took.

It had been a pure mistake, and that was the part that enraged him worst of all. It had been something he could’ve controlled, if he had known a little sooner. If he had been less distracted. It took the the barn and his vessel before he could escape to another, more mobile skin, and by the time he managed to find the cat-flesh it was so charred as to be unusable.

And then the Beast had come. Enoch had known that the loathsome thing was heartless and spiteful, but he had thought--he had hoped--perhaps they understood each other! They had seemed to. He had almost been convinced.

He'd been so stupid, to have any care at all for such a thing. He never should have given it his attention.  Wretched, unworthy monster.

For the Beast had come, and the Beast had twisted the fires and ate his people and did not even care what he did. The Beast had sworn once that all things fell into darkness, and he had come to make it true, at the expense of everything Enoch had done for him. Everything Enoch had hoped to mean to him.

He should’ve ripped off the other antler. He should’ve made the Beast suffer for his cruelty and his terrible wickedness.

It would’ve been useless, of course. One couldn’t hurt a monster in any way that would make it stick. They didn't have feelings.

But it would’ve felt so good, at least for Enoch.

Enoch only hoped that his people hadn’t suffered, when they died. Without bodies and nerves, he hoped they might have been spared some pain.

Enoch only stirred when he felt a foot press into the earth where his barn entrance used to be. He shot a few withered roots up out of the dirt to threaten, and heard a voice he knew cry out in fear.

He went totally still and silent, fury evaporating away.

“Enoch?” the voice asked. “Enoch, is that you?”

He didn’t dare to hope.

“Miss Clara?” he asked. “Miss Clara Deen?”

“Yes, Enoch,” the voice said. “It’s me. Oh, Enoch, what happened?”

He scrambled for a vessel, any kind of vessel. He dragged all the white and withered roots he could find together, shifting the earth mightily as he went, and he roared up out of the ground, forming a body like his old maypole configuration out of the dead appendages. He made things that weren’t eyes, but looked the part, and peered down.

Miss Clara was naked. The maidenly starkness of her poor bones appalled him.

“We need to get you dressed!” Enoch announced, aghast.

Miss Clara laughed softly. “Oh, Enoch,” she said. “It’s fine. No one’s really worried about modesty at a time like this. Are you all right?”

“Oh yes, I’m fine, perfectly, perfectly fine.” He reached out for her and she kindly returned his embrace, knowing, as a good worshipper did, what a god sometimes needed. He found his own roots deep down through the land and touched the wellspring of his essence, and he poured satisfaction and joy into her, feeding himself in the bargain.

Miss Clara, for her part, patted his back.

“The others are by the tree,” Miss Clara said. “Come with me, I’ll show you. They’re all worried about you, but they’re too afraid to come into town.”

“What? Afraid?” Enoch asked, roots crumbling as he used them to pull himself along. “Why, there’s nothing to fear, here! The fires are all gone. It’s just harmless ruins. We’ll have to rebuild, but--”

“It’s not that,” Miss Clara said, shaking her head. “I’m...not sure what it is. I don’t quite feel it. But some of them...I don't know. You’ll see, and you can tell me what you think the matter is.”

Enoch and Miss Clara went out into one of the Eastern fields and he looked out over his crops.

Enoch stared, uncomprehending.

He had been in the earth and angry and grieving. He had not noticed when this strange, black tree unfolded on his land, full and rigid and vastly more terrible than an Edelwood. In the space of days it had become full-grown, tall and strange.

Strange fruits dropped out of its branches and wandered towards Enoch and Miss Clara.

“Oh!” a naked Miss Elizabelle cried. “Oh, is that--?”

“Yes,” Miss Clara said.

“Thank goodness!” Mr. Aspen said. “Enoch!”

Enoch stared as some of his people--even Mr. Aspen himself--flinched.

“You’re all here,” he said. They came forward at the sound of his voice, clustering around him. He wanted to reach out and hold them all. “You’re all right?”

“Not...everyone,” Miss Elizabelle said. “I’m afraid Mrs. Green...and Mr. Mathers, well…”

“We’ll have a proper funeral for them,” Parson Bleak said solemnly. “But, Enoch…”

Another flinch.

“Enoch,” Parson Bleak repeated firmly, trying to shake the power of the suggestion. “So many of us are here, and we should be long gone. Look at the town, for God’s sake! What happened?”

“Oh! It was horrible! The fires burned so hot,” Miss Lulilly said, “but then, so suddenly, everything went cold. So, so cold.”

“Like being thrown into a frozen lake,” Mr. Pearson added.

“Never felt the like before,” Mr. Hapsborough grumbled.

“Like being lost in the dark,” Miss Clara mused. “And I knew something wanted to eat me. But it didn’t.”

“Terribly, terribly lost! And I didn’t hardly knew where I was, when I felt the warm soil,” Miss Elizabelle said.

“It reminded me of Mr. Hope,” Miss Lulilly said. “You know. That nice Mr. Hope, who brought us back the pumpkin thief so many months ago.”

Enoch sank slowly to the ground, dazed. He thought, delirious, how glad he was that he could blame that on the crumbling roots.

“Enoch!” Miss Clara cried. “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” Enoch said. He stayed down. “I’m fine.”

“We need to find you a body, immediately,” Miss Clara said. “Come on. I bet we can weave something out of grass in a minute or two, and not all the cornfields are lost. We can use the silk. Come on, everyone. Come on. Let’s make a body for Enoch.”

They all spent some hours working. Some of his people were busily unearthing what tools and materials they could find in the charred wreckage of the village. Some were scouting out to see what had survived the fire.

One scout had found a big black branch, all befouled at one end with dark oil. The scout had brought it over.

Enoch couldn’t look at it.

“Was it Mr. Hope that saved us, Enoch?” MIss Lulilly asked quietly, as she sat beside him and made him a ribbon. “I think it must’ve been, don’t you? I think he must’ve come when he saw what was going on, and he put us somewhere safe, and then he spat us back up.”

“Yes,” Enoch replied. “That is what he did. That’s exactly…”

“We must thank him,” Miss Lulilly said decisively. “We really must. Do you think he’d like a dance, Enoch? I think he’s just the sort to like a dance. All the most chivalrous types of fellows do.”

Enoch’s roots reached out and ripped the earth, gouging and shredding. They whipped the dirt and shattered into pieces.

Everyone jumped. He was scaring them.

Enoch slowly got what was left of his roots under control.

“No,” he said mildly, lying limp on the scorched ground. “I do not think he will ever come back and dance with us.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Reconnect](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6442390) by [miraeyeteeth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/miraeyeteeth/pseuds/miraeyeteeth)




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